Room-temperature semiconducting X-ray and γ-ray detectors are crucial in a number of technologies, including biomedical imaging, national security and spectroscopy instrumentation; however, the high cost of commercial detectors has severely limited their broad application. Finding low cost room-temperature radiation detectors is a complex, multifaceted challenge. First of all, there is a limited number of potential detector materials due to the low availability of heavy element compounds possessing suitable optical band gaps (1.5˜3.0 eV) and high resistivity. For example, the heavy chalcogenides, HgQ (Q=Se and Te), which are isostructural with CdTe and the rock salt PbQ, possess nearly zero or very narrow energy gaps. The second problem arises from the complex physics and chemistry of compound semiconductors in comparison to their elemental counterparts, such as Si and Ge. Third, many compounds with attractive bulk physical properties, such as α-HgS and TlI, exhibit phase transitions hindering the growth of high quality single crystals. For compounds suitable for crystal growth, e.g. the commercial benchmark Cd0.9Zn0.1Te (CZT), the detector material suffers from stoichiometric imbalance and Te phase precipitation rooted in its intrinsic chemical properties, which have prevented its low cost production.